Page:Waylaid by Wireless - Balmer - 1909.djvu/211

Rh he distinctly recalls that his assailant cut himself, or somehow was cut, upon the right wrist. He says the bleeding from that stained his clothes. The steward and the purser both swear also that the man who put Mr. Hareston aboard the Bahia had his right wrist newly bandaged with a handkerchief!"

The American felt his head drooping, and, as the officer still grasped his arm and held its wound in clear view of all, he stared dully, dazedly, stupidly down at the white bandage about his wrist.

But suddenly another hand—a quiet, firm, steadying little hand, whose touch brought him up quickly, alert and ashamed, to his senses, and brought with it, too, a thrill of something so strange and unexampled that it ran through him with a great recklessness of everything for that moment—that hand touched his bandaged wrist and recovered it, simply and unresistingly, from the heavy grasp of the officer.

"Miss Varris!" he cried then, recovering himself, 187